Marlene van Niekerk - Agaat

23 February 1959

A. very responsible helps only too diligently with everything around the place: Stacks pumpkins pulls potatoes plucks the geese. She shines in the kitchen, can make a good white sauce already & a quite presentable stew & hr flapjacks & scones are excellent. She’s managing very well with needle & thread. Gave hr a needlework basket for hr little things. Teach hr something new every day, buttonhole flat-seam blanket-stitch. I praise hr often & she reacts excellently to praise & encouragement & tries only to excel & improve herself. She’s even been to pick blackberries & made blackberry jam according to the recipe in the book without one sticky patch in the kitchen. For the rest very perceptive came & reported that the chickens were sneezing & we could prevent an outbreak of roup. Lost only about four day-old chickens & all the others including turkeys & ducks treated preventatively. J. has this idea that he can build poultry-runs in a draught so that’s what he has for it. He says the chickens got it from me & A. we infect everything we touch & what will I do if he gets chicken flu?

11 March 1959

A. solemnly came to sing to me this morning for my birthday. Best wishes dear Même on this your birthday, That the Lord you will keep we earnestly pray. She’d baked an orange cake first thing this morning all on her own & written 33 on it with icing sugar in higgledy-piggledy letters. Then she gave me wrapped in a scrap of green velvet stitched with blanket-stitch & tied with a red ribbon hr prettiest fossil. Was with her the day she picked it up on the mountain. Haven’t yet been able to make out what it is. Some or other floating seed with membranous wing or otherwise a membrane-winged insect. A parasitic wasp perhaps. Looks exactly like a little galleon & the stone-ripples look like waves. A remarkable likeness. Can’t really believe she wants to give it to me. It’s our ship, just the two of us where are we sailing to? she asks me. What could be happening in the child’s head?

10 October 1959

Can’t abide J.’s aggression towards A. any longer. An unbearable atmosphere in the house. She’s an early bloomer he says she ogles him. What nonsense but perhaps I’m missing something. Hear the maids teasing in the kitchen: But you’re pushing tits Aspatat. She’s been moody of late. I suppose the start of the trouble.

13 October 1959

A. reads all the time went & fetched a lot of Ma’s books out of the cellar last year. Genoveva, Alone in the World, Prisoner of Zenda, Scarlet Pimpernel, In the Footsteps of the Master by HV Morton & In the Steps of St Paul by HV Morton & Late Harvest. A. knows them all by heart & asks for more books. J. doesn’t approve of hr reading adult books. What’s the difference I ask after all she reads the Farmer’s Weekly.

27 October 1959

Lay awake all night about A. She’s always been inclined to disappear but now it’s getting too bad. Saar & Lietja say they find her roaming with her reading-book down there by the labourers’ cottages but she runs away when they call hr. Must be looking for company shame. I suppose I must tackle the facts of life. Shouldn’t be difficult she knows about covering & lambing & calving & all creatures great & small birds & bees. Came to tell me the other day she’d uncoupled the terrier single-handedly when one of the labourers’ dogs got stuck in her again.

3 November 1959

Really rather put out by conversation with Beatrice this morning. Suspect she drove over on purpose to come & bring me the news. Apparently people are gossiping about A.’s situation & it seems the dominee’s wife has plenty to say on the subject. No it would appear we’re involved in ‘subtly undermining community values’ & defeating the ends of the political policy of the authorities & what would happen if everybody did what I’m doing with A.

A good question I suppose.

B. just carries on & on: Yes it will jeopardise Jak’s position in the church & the farmers’ associations & the regional branch of the party here if we don’t set our house in order & heaven knows what else.

I say Jak’s church is skin-deep anyway & the child means so much to me & even though Jak & I differ on the subject I still feel as though I’m a better wife to Jak because I have more love in my heart & can care for an independent creature. B. looks at me askance but I carry on. Through hr I see the world through fresh eyes I say & I ask: Does she Beatrice have any idea what it is to be childless?

B. sits there with a sceptical slant to hr face & drinks hr tea with her little finger aloft. That’s all very good & pretty & noble she says but I should really think very well about the long-term consequences not only for us but for the broader community & also for A. herself. At this her mouth contracts into a nasty little slit. (J. always says it’s the can’t-get-the-knot-through-the-hole mouth & he doesn’t want to know what she looks like down south.)

Must say it’s an aspect of B. that I haven’t been so aware of before but I’m noticing it more & more frequently of late. I know old Thys belongs to the Broederbond & he’s now proposed Jak but Jak feels little for the idea. I know why: They read too many books there. Beatrice says old Thys pores over the dictionary every evening it’s way beyond him.

I say I’m not sure about such secret organisations & I vote Nationalist but I’m not ashamed to object in public to such skulduggery. B. says it’s top secret & who am I now to think I can turn against the leaders & intellectuals of my people I’ll cut my own throat & Jak’s as well if that’s my attitude & I’d better realise on which side my bread is buttered & ‘they’ can make things very difficult for people who are not well disposed to the national cause & we’ll never reach the top rung if ‘they’ know Jak de Wet’s wife swims upstream however learned & refined she may be. So I went off to make tea to keep my temper within bounds & when I came in again she carried on exactly where she’d left off.

Yes, she says, A. can’t do a thing with the education that I’m giving her & what use does one in any case have for an over-educated servant on a farm. She’s not a servant I say & then B. said well she hasn’t noticed other people’s children of the same age sweeping stoeps & feeding chickens & serving tea to guests & calling their mothers Nooi. I say A. & I understand each other it’s play names & play work it’s a special relationship. B. says what’s the use the two of us thinking it’s a game & it’s special & everybody else in the country thinks it’s abnormal & a sin before God.

Will have to go & talk to the dominee myself. Can’t altogether believe what B. tells me about the judgement of the pastorie. After all Van der Lught himself named her & baptised her? How can he turn like that? Could swear it’s that wife of his that’s the real poison pusher.

16 December 1959

Period two weeks late if my sums are right. Has happened before. Perhaps the ado about A. that’s telling on my system she’s so tuned in to my moods she sees immediately when I’m depressed & always asks if it’s she who’s done something wrong. This morning I found by my bed a bunch of hydrangeas made up with red leaves of fire-on-the-mountain in the grey vase they won’t last long she says it’s too hot but it’s to cheer me up asks me if I’m feeling ill.

23 December ’59

Had blood drawn today. Dr had left on holiday already & only his partner there & he can’t tell me when the results will be available. He says with somebody who’s been trying for such a long time as I they want to be absolutely sure & it has to go to Cape Town for analysis.